Players from the side in Liga F have visited users from AFA Castellón as part of the Endavant Igualtat project
Villarreal Women have visited the users of AFA Castelló, a non-profit organisation created by family members of Alzheimer’s patients. To do this, the Yellows were divided into two groups to meet both those users who attend the Day Centre in Vila-real and those who attend the Centre for the Promotion of Personal Autonomy in Almassora. These non-residential social service facilities provide specific care to prevent and slow down the loss of autonomy of users with Alzheimer’s through the development of different programmes.
During their visit to the Vila-real centre, the footballers were asked to actively participate in a daily day with the users of the centre based on different games, both physical and mental, with the aim of working on memory and also keeping the users active. “First we all introduced ourselves and then we played a more social game of questions to work on memory,” explained Andorran attacker Tere Morató. The users had to name everyday objects such as clothes or food, or carry out actions such as opening a door.
Before the end of the day, the Yellows had a great time singing and dancing along with the users. An exercise that helps them to remember singers from their youth and to stimulate their memory, helping to combat the progression of the disease. “They love to sing and dance, because they have a great time and that has been the most fun,” said Morató moments after singing together the classic song ‘Clavelitos’.
Tere also expressed her desire to repeat the visit and spoke of how gratifying the experience was: “Without a doubt we would have to repeat this day, because it has helped us a lot to know what it is like and to be able to put a name to a disease like Alzheimer’s disease. It is very gratifying because it helps us a lot, we have had a great time and we have learned many things”.
From the association, Marga Macián, TASOC of the Vila-real Day Centre, thanked the yellow entity for its participation and stressed the importance of these initiatives for the centre. “It makes us very excited to be able to share these moments with an entity such as Villarreal CF”. He added: “It is a way of raising awareness of the disease and the AFA project”.
Endavant Igualtat
Endavant Igualtat is a project promoted by Villarreal CF that is committed to the education and personal development of their football players. The main Yellows Academy and Villarreal Women teams actively participate in this initiative, sponsoring different special centres in the province of Castellón, with the added objective of helping members in their personal growth.
